Risk & Liability
Architecture

Why This Series Exists

My background is in commerce. Before becoming a registered building surveyor in Victoria, I spent time in financial services — and I hold a Comprehensive IA licence (Types 1-5) issued by the Insurance Authority of Hong Kong. I didn't plan for these two careers to intersect. But they do, in ways that are difficult to unsee once you've noticed them.

As a registered Building Surveyor, I sit down every year to renew my professional indemnity insurance. Every year, the form asks me to quantify the risk I carry — the projects I've touched, the permits I've signed, the inspections I've conducted. And every year, I find myself thinking less like a building surveyor and more like someone trained to read insurance products critically: what is this instrument actually covering, and what happens when it's tested?

That question — the gap between what insurance appears to cover and what it actually does — is what this series is about. Not as a legal treatise. Not as financial advice. But as a practitioner's field notes from someone positioned, by accident of career, to read the fine print from both sides.

The Instrument Nobody Reads

Professional indemnity insurance in Victoria is mandatory for registered building surveyors. No policy, no registration. No registration, no practice. That much everyone knows. What is less understood is how the policy actually works — specifically, that it operates on a claims-made basis.

A claims-made policy only responds to claims lodged while the policy is active, regardless of when the work was performed; it is triggered specifically when the claim is made

The distinction sounds technical. But it isn't: It means that the umbrella you carry today only protects you if it's still open when the rain starts falling. And in this industry, the rain can arrive years after you've walked away from the project.

Section 134: The Clock You Can't Stop

Under the Building Act 1993 (Vic), s134(1) sets a 10-year limitation period for building actions, running from the date the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection is issued. That is the statutory trigger. Not when defects appear. Not when a dispute is raised. The clock starts the moment the permit is signed.

For building surveyors, this creates an exposure profile unlike most professions. Every occupancy permit you sign opens a 10-year window of potential liability. Sign 30 permits a year for 20 years, and at any given moment you are carrying overlapping liability windows stretching back through most of your career.

The Catch-22 of Risk Assessment

Renewal time surfaces something that, once you see it, you cannot unsee. The underwriter needs to assess your risk. Your risk is assessed by looking at how long you've practised and what you've worked on. If you're experienced, your historical exposure is large. If you're junior, your competence profile raises flags. There is no configuration that presents as low-risk.

The underwriter is not pricing your skill. They are pricing your exposure. These are not the same thing.

This is where a background in commerce becomes less a credential and more a diagnostic tool. When I look at the PI renewal form, I don't just see a compliance requirement. I see a risk pricing mechanism — one that is structurally indifferent to whether the practitioner is good at their job.

What This Series Will Cover

Over the coming entries, I'll be working through several connected questions: What does PI insurance actually cover when tested in court — and what does it not? What happens to a building surveyor's liability exposure at retirement, and why "stopping work" is not the same as "stopping risk"? How does Victoria's Domestic Building Insurance model compare to what existed before the BPC reforms of 2025 — and what changed for consumers? And finally, what does Hong Kong's insurance culture reveal, by contrast, about how differently risk can be distributed when it is made visible to the public rather than embedded in institutional mandates?

These aren't abstract questions. They are questions that affect every private building surveyor practising in Victoria today — most of whom, in my observation, have never had reason to think through the full architecture of the risk they carry.

Conclusion

The umbrella analogy is useful but incomplete. A PI policy isn't just an umbrella — it's an umbrella with an expiry date, a set of exclusions you need a magnifying glass to read, and a mechanism that only activates when someone decides to stand in front of you in court and call it rain. Most practitioners carry it because they have to. Very few have tested what happens when it's actually opened.

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